It’s all about sports…mostly.

"Constructed in Columbia, South Carolina, The Arsenal was converted into an educational institution in 1842. Burned to the ground during the Civil War, it was never reopened...that is, until recently, when it became a sports blog."

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This is going to be a grab-bag type of post, a variety pack if you will. I may do this sort of thing periodically, as I really need to blog on a more regular basis. I look at this as a way to make shorter comments on various issues, mostly about sports (including sports at The Citadel), with a few other odds and ends that catch my eye. Think of them as Twitter entries that are longer than 140 characters.

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Speaking of Twitter, my latest tweets can be seen on the left side of this page. If anyone hasn’t noticed and is halfway interested in following me on Twitter, the location is http://twitter.com/SandlapperSpike (my tweets feature links/comments on a lot of stuff, including up-to-the-minute updates on Bulldog sports, baseball, football, and soccer, among other things).

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As The Citadel counts down to kickoff against Chowan (as of today, T-41 days!), it’s time to focus on the Bulldogs’ new offense, which may be a little like an old offense, namely Charlie Taaffe’s wishbone attack. However, it appears that Kevin Higgins may intend to run more of a “spread” triple option than Taaffe’s offense.

With that in mind, it might be a good idea to take a look at what the folks at Navy (and Georgia Tech, with Paul Johnson’s arrival in Atlanta) have been doing, particularly since Higgins apparently told one of our quarterback recruits (Ben Dupree) that The Citadel would be running a “Navy-style triple-option offense.”

Another reason to pay attention to the triple option is that Georgia Southern is also going to start running the offense this season, in a return to its roots.

For those interested in a breakdown of the nuts and bolts of the triple option, then, I cannot recommend highly enough a visit to The Birddog, the blog of choice for Navy football (and lacrosse). The Birddog does a great, great job of illustrating (with video!) the intricacies of the triple option attack.

I’ve picked out four posts that I think serve as a good introductory primer for what the offense is all about. (I hope I’ve chosen correctly.) While reading these, just in case anyone gets confused, keep in mind that Paul Johnson is the former head coach at Navy (and Georgia Southern, of course) and is now at Georgia Tech. The current Navy head coach is Ken Niumatalolo, and his offensive coordinator is Ivin Jasper.

As of today, only one of The Citadel’s football games is scheduled to be televised (at Wofford on October 30). There is always a chance that a local station (either in Charleston or another SoCon town) will elect to broadcast a game, although that is unlikely. Other than that scenario, there are only two other games that could be televised.

It is possible (but doubtful) that SportSouth will pick up the November 20 game at Samford as part of its “SoCon Saturday” package, as the last two weekends of the regular season are “wild card” weekends — basically, the network will televise the most attractive matchup that week, based on the teams’ records to that point in the season. Admittedly, very few prognosticators are going to bet that a game between Samford and The Citadel will have serious repercussions in the league standings, but you never know.

However, there is a decent chance that The Citadel’s game at Arizona on September 11 will be televised by Fox Sports Net Arizona (FSN-AZ), a regional sports network received by cable subscribers in Arizona (and I believe parts of California and New Mexico), and also available as part of DirecTV’s “Sports Pack”. Arizona has asked the Pac-10 (and the league’s TV partners) for a waiver in order for the game to be broadcast.

The reason a waiver is needed is because there are already two Pac-10 games scheduled to be televised during the same time period, and that league’s national cable partners have television exclusivity rights for those games. In other words, a local/regional broadcast can’t take place at the same time as a nationally televised league TV game. If another Pac-10 school wants its game on television, it has to play in another time slot.

However, Arizona and Arizona State have been given waivers in the past because home game time slots for those schools are limited, especially early in the season. You just can’t play a football game in the desert in the midday heat.

(Matt Sarzyniak was nice enough to explain the Arizona/Arizona State waiver issue to me, which I appreciate.)

We’ll see what happens. I am cautiously optimistic that the game will be televised.

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The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee passed legislation that, if approved, will establish a time clock in college baseball. The committee is basically incorporating the rules employed by the SEC for its 2010 conference tournament.

The 20-second rule for throwing a pitch was already on the books, but now it will be enforced with a timer, as will the amount of time allocated between innings. I’ll be interested to see how the Southern Conference handles this; will it have a visible clock, with a timekeeper in the press box monitoring it? Or will it just have an umpire carrying a watch? I’m guessing the latter, for financial reasons.

The committee also modified the obstruction rule, which got a lot of notoriety in the Southern Conference tournament thanks to the second-round game/brawl between The Citadel and Elon. That was the second-wildest fight I’ve ever seen at the SoCon tourney (nothing compares to the epic Raleigh/Piepenbrink donnybrook in 1990, though).

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Not about sports: you can be assured that I will never quote from or link to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Why, you ask? This is why.

I sincerely hope that the Review-Journal goes bankrupt sooner rather than later. Also, the photo of the CEO in the first link — doesn’t he look like a guy who hopes you throw something at him, so that he can sue you?

I have a great deal of respect for copyright law. I think this guy and the Review-Journal (which is funding him) are abusing copyright law.

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Not about sports: I really enjoyed this article in The New Yorker on the identification and authentication of artworks. It’s a long piece, but worthwhile. I won’t spoil it, but there is a major twist halfway through. The bottom line: if P.T. Barnum had been more familiar with the art world, he would have said “there’s a sucker born every 15 seconds.”

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Finally, a new feature, the Plant of the Week. That’s right, plants. As I’ve said elsewhere on the blog, I consider gardening a sport. In honor of this being the first edition of the PotW, I will honor not one but two plants in my garden. Both are crinums. Feast your eyes on a Powelii (Cecil Houdyshel) and a Herbertii (no common name).